The following personas seem to group together under the category of "professor" – please consolidate into one or two personas with very specific stories.
Remote Professor
- Lee, a professor at Oxford
- Found an incomplete citation for an 1845 document involving Mary and John Smith in a book published in 1968, which indicates this material is held by your institution. Does not know the precise nature of the document or which repository in your institution might hold it, and the collection name does not precisely match any of your institution's holdings.
- Would like a copy of this specific document, as well as the current, correct citation.
- Residing overseas, Lee cannot visit your institution, and would prefer to search for and access this material online if possible.
Visiting Fellow
- Kate, 38, professor in Comparative Literature
- Kate will be in town for 3 months, during which time she will be conducting research at a few different libraries and museums.
- Already has over 100 boxes of archival material identified from finding aids that she plans to request, and would prefer to submit those requests in bulk prior to her visit.
- Plans to photograph everything she finds related to her current research project. Kate has developed a system of keeping track of her photographs with the help of a spreadsheet, which she uses later to sort each file into directories with meaningful names via a Python script that she wrote a few years back. Would like to have a better way to connect this information to the source metadata, possibly by using the barcodes she often finds on archival boxes, but hasn’t had the time to work such a process out.
- Kate prefers to *not* use OPACs, finding aid websites, digital libraries, etc. She prefers working with raw metadata. She used to work at an institution that had a Digital Humanities center, and while working closely with that department on a grant project, she picked up tricks and tools that have helped her expand her research methodologies (and not to trust the indexes provided by digital libraries, etc.).
- Kate’s also kicking around the idea for a new project right now that will explore cultural heritage metadata as text. She loves the bulk metadata exports that she has found from some libraries, but was dismayed to find out what’s missing from these records – for one example, there’s no information about the catalogers who worked on these records. Since she makes it a habit to meet and talk with public and technical services staff whenever she's doing research, she’s learned that this metadata exists elsewhere. She’s glad to know that cataloger information exists in a lot of finding aids, for instance, but she hasn't had any luck yet in getting bulk downloads of finding aids from any institutions where she’s conducted research since conceiving of this project.
- Kate dislikes (but occasionally enjoys) finding the dead end of a black box; having to start with a black box (i.e. the user interface provided by the library) in the first place; being unsure if there’s more metadata available that might assist her research.
Academic Library/Special Collections Personas (added by Matt).
- Lucy, tenured professor, 39 years old.
- Wants robust advanced/faceted searching to narrow search results.
- Would like use the public interface to request materials for use in the reading room prior to their arrival.
- Would like streamlined access to digitized content for classroom use.
Historical Society (Added by Linda)
- Terrence, History professor, 45 years old
- Wants to easily locate information
- prefers staff find it for him
- can’t read historical documents (English is not his first language) and would prefer to see transcriptions
- If he has to view it online, it needs to be one click or less from the search page
- Sally, Music Professor, 50 years old
- Desperately wants to access a collection described in the online catalog but cannot travel
- Will pay to fund digitization
- The collection includes bound volumes, which she would like to flip through in the same way as an e-book
- Wants to access digital images in the same place as the description, without having to click forward and back. She wants to see the finding aid, have the digital object open in a new window, and easily be able to close it to click on the next item from the finding aid.
Special Collections Personas (added by Susan)
Justin Doe, age 55, a professor, in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, specializing in German and Medieval art. Justin regularly needs to request material for the classes he brings to the archive.
- Wants to be able to find them directly by their call number which he knows already and request to use them in the archives classroom via AEON, the archive’s request system.
- Wants to be able to find what has been digitized easily for students to use outside the classroom.
- Wants to do a call number search that takes him directly to the item he wants.
- Wants the ability to save all his items to a “shopping cart” feature, then do one AEON request for all the items.